Naruto Uncut Season Four Volume 1

Guest Author - Lesley Aeschliman

The Naruto Uncut Season Four Volume 1 box set is a six DVD set that contains episodes 164 through 191 of the Naruto anime series. The first disc contains four episodes, the second disc contains five episodes, the third disc contains five episodes and bonus features, the fourth disc contains four episodes, the fifth disc contains five episodes, and the sixth disc contains five episodes and bonus features.

This set concludes the search for "The Cursed Warrior"; Naruto, Sakura, and Choji help the owner of the ramen shop to rescue his daughter; Naruto, Ino, Shino, and Anko go on a mission to defeat an ocean demon; Naruto babysits a rich brat; Naruto, Hinata, and Kiba go on a treasure hunt; Naruto and Jiraiya have a mail escapade; the Hidden Village of Star arc; Akamaru being infected with a biological weapon; Naruto becoming a "mother" to a creature called an Onbaa; Naruto and Shino helping a chief mourner so he can receive his inheritance; and the Land of Greens arc. Basically, all of the episodes included on this set are considered to be "filler" episodes for the anime series, since these stories did not appear in the Naruto manga series.

Just like the previous six boxes in this set of Naruto releases, this is a "bare bones" release; there are no booklets or inserts included in the box. When it comes to the actual discs included in this set, they are exactly the same as the discs that were released in the Naruto Uncut Box Set 13 and Naruto Uncut Box Set 14 box sets.

The first bonus feature on the third disc is labeled as "Production Art." This consists of 15 pages, which are model sketches of some of the Naruto characters. There is a sneak preview of Naruto Uncut Box Set 14, which runs for four minutes. Next is "From Sketch to Screen," which contains eight pages of storyboards from episode 173; for each storyboard, you can choose to see the clip that the storyboard is for. You can also see the English credits in the "Extras" menu.

Next in the extras menu is a selection labeled "New From Viz Media." This link takes you to advertisements for Shonen Jump magazine, two Naruto pages, and two pages featuring other Shonen Jump manga titles. A link in the extras menu labeled as "DVD Trailers" takes you to a set of trailers. There are trailers for: Naruto the Movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom (there is no audio if you are on the Japanese audio track; in order to hear it, you have to have the English audio track selected) and Bleach the Movie: Memories of Nobody. The final link in the extras menu is labeled as "Game Trailers," and it has trailers for: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2, Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2, and Naruto: The Broken Bond.

The first bonus feature on the sixth disc is labeled as "Production Art." This consists of 15 pages, which are model sketches of some of the Naruto characters. There is a sneak preview of Naruto Uncut Box Set 15, which runs for four minutes. Next is "From Sketch to Screen," which contains eight pages of storyboards from episode 182; for each storyboard, you can choose to see the clip that the storyboard is for. You can also see the English credits in the "Extras" menu.

Next in the extras menu is a selection labeled "New From Viz Media." This link takes you to advertisements for Shonen Jump magazine, one Naruto page, and two pages featuring other Shonen Jump manga titles. A link in the extras menu labeled as "DVD Trailers" takes you to a set of trailers. There are trailers for: Naruto the Movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom and Bleach the Movie: Memories of Nobody. The final link in the extras menu is labeled as "Game Trailers," and it has the exact same trailers as the third disc.

If you enjoy Naruto and haven't already purchased the Naruto Uncut sets, this would be an economical way to get the episodes on DVD in order to add them to your collection. You get double the amount of the content of the original sets, but you pay about the same amount as you would have for the original Naruto Uncut DVD box sets. However, if you do purchase this set, just be aware that this is simply a repackaging of Naruto Uncut Box Set 13 and Naruto Uncut Box Set 14. All Viz Media really did to change the discs was to make minor changes to the labels on the physical discs included in the set.

I wrote this review after watching a copy of this DVD set that my husband and I purchased.

Disc 1

Disc 2

Disc 3

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